"But I bet that the morning, in the morning, we'll find us in bloom…"

Columbus Marathon Training – Week Five: Family Reunion Weekend

Week five seems like a distant memory by now. It was another hot week, but my body seems to be adapting well. This was my first week with some faster paced runs (basically easy pace minus 30 seconds) and I was really happy with how the week went. I kicked it off with my minus 30 run and I was pleasantly surprised with how good it felt. Since we were going to be traveling for my family reunion on Friday and Sunday, I moved my rest day and also ran on Tuesday. I was keeping up pretty well on Wednesday and Thursday and had planned to do my second minus 30 run on Friday morning before we hit the road. My alarm went off a little after 4 am and I hit snooze. Next thing I knew the sound of torrential rain was pounding down the roof and there was a ton of thunder and lightening. Our drive was 8.5 hours long and we planned to hit the road by 6:30 am that morning so I had to accept that I was just going to miss a run this week. I knew Saturday would be a late night with a lot of drinking followed by a long car ride back home the next morning so I really wanted to keep Sunday as a rest day so I could enjoy myself with my family. I missed my 40 mile mark for the week only hitting 36 with that missing run, but since it’s week 5 I’m just calling it a cutback week 😉 We don’t have anymore travel planned for the summer so I shouldn’t have any issues.

On the up side, one of my cousins has been running pretty regularly and doing some longer runs on the weekend so she agreed join me for my 13 mile long run on Saturday morning. I was happy to have some company especially since I really had no idea where to run. It’s not very fun when you run by yourself and have to run around aimlessly to get to a certain mileage for the day. I met up with her at my uncle’s house where she was staying and we headed into the small downtown area and then turned down one of the roads that leads to the bay. It was a hot and humid morning, but we started at 6am so there weren’t many cars out and it made for a pretty pleasant run. On the way back towards my uncles we stopped at Wawa so my cousin could get some ice for her water bottle. We ended up running back to my uncle’s and past into another neighborhood to get in the last few miles. We took a circle through someone’s yard to hit their sprinklers which was great. My grandmother lives around the corner from my uncle so I had dropped off some stuff the evening before so I could cook myself some breakfast after my run. I drank Nuun on this run, but unfortunately I didn’t do a good job of hydrating post-run and ended up feeling pretty lousy for a few hours after. I grabbed a Gatorade when I was out running errands with my mom and felt a lot better after getting that in my system.

View of the bay on my run

I had been looking forward to our family reunion for months so I’m dealing with the post-family reunion blues right now. The majority of the family came into town Friday and left on Sunday, but it seems obvious that next time we should all plan on having two days together if possible because one just wasn’t enough. I grew up in Northern NJ and the rest of my family lived around the state. We would often get together at my grandparent’s house in South Jersey and, as youngsters, would always play in my uncle’s yard that joins up with my grandma’s yard. My family moved down to Virginia when I was in middle school and as well all grew older everyone started to scatter about. I now have family that live as far north as New Hampshire and as far south as South Carolina. The last time were all together was four years ago at my wedding, but we didn’t have any children at our wedding and more have been born since then. At the end of last year my cousin and his family stopped by as they were driving back across the country to their home in Maryland and I had such a nice time visiting with them for that brief window that I texted my cousin and told him we should have a family reunion for the first time ever. He agreed and soon I found that a lot of my other cousins liked that idea. Months later, the weekend has now come and gone and it was a blast. We brought it back to where we remember the most together time, my uncle’s yard, and had a cookout with lots of beer.

The reunion set up

There were about 25 of us there total and the weather started out sweat-through-your-clothes hot, but we made the best of it. The kids had fun playing in the pool, on the slip-n-slide, and having a water balloon fight. At one point we had a thunderstorm warning so he popped down the tents, sent the kids inside, and waited around until it blew over. We did end up having a minor thunderstorm later in the evening, but the kids were inside so we just hung under the tents out of the rain drinking and eating smores. I don’t have many photos from the reunion. While most of us had intentions on taking a lot of photos (including one big photos of all of us cousins together), we were all enjoying ourselves so much we only took a few in the beginning. I’m happy though that we were enjoying the time together and not worrying about capturing it in a photo. My husband and I rented a cabin down the road that my uncle’s friend has up on Air BnB, but most of the family stayed right at my grandmother’s and uncle’s. When I first proposed the idea of a reunion I assured everyone that it would not be a yearly thing. Since heading back yesterday, there have been a lot of mentions of “next time” so even though I still don’t intend for this to be a yearly thing it looks like we will have to plan another in the next few years.

Hanging with my cousins at our reunion.

Sunday morning we got up early and packed up the car before heading back to my grandmothers. I assure you I could not have run that morning! I made the rounds and said my goodbyes and then we hit the road for the long drive back. We were seriously in the car for most of the day, but we took our time and made the best of it.

Crossing the Ben Franklin Bridge into Philly

I took the day off today to get laundry done, go grocery shopping, and do all those weekend things we didn’t get to do since we were gone. Even though I got my run in this morning, my mind is so far away from marathon training right now. I still plan to stick to my plan for the week, but I will need some time to refocus. As of now I am still very ready for fall and not even because of the weather. My coworker was mentioning the other day that once she got back from vacation she was ready for summer to be over and that’s how I’m feeling now. Onto the next big thing, please!

Sounds like a fun weekend and a really good training week given that you were traveling. I know what you mean about training being far from your mind after a fun weekend away. I’m always the same way around vacation. Even if I do okay with training while away, when I’m back it’s like I’ve broken the momentum and it’s so hard to get it back again. It’s something I’ll need to work on this training cycle because my vacation is right in the middle of training. Good luck re-focusing!